KENYA: The regulars at the Small Wends Bar put their heads together. "This G8 you talk about," says Christopher Muli Nizioki, after a brief confab. "What is it?" He might not know about the G8 summit at Gleneagles, but the decisions taken there on trade, debt relief and aid could deeply affect Mr Nizioki's life.
He and his friends sitting beneath a corrugated iron shelter in the bar's beer garden live in Kibera, Africa's biggest slum.
Almost a million people live in its ramshackle mud-brick huts at the edge of Nairobi. Roofs of corrugated iron and shredded plastic bags stretch into the distance.
This is the ghost of Africa Future. Its people are silenced by their poverty and excluded from the debate on their future.
Yet the number of people living in slums like Kibera is expected to double by 2030. The United Nations Habitat agency estimates that two billion people will be living in shanty settlements across the developing world by 2030, undermining attempts to relieve urban poverty.
Patrick Gitonga, who runs a grocery stall, takes a sip from his soda and says Tony Blair should visit Kibera.
Not a flying visit to the edge of the slum like Gordon Brown, he says quickly, but come right into the centre.
"I would bring him here to Silanga, this village where I live. I would bring him when it rains so that he can see what happens when the drainage blocks. We get rubbish floating all over, and it is a hazard to our health."
There are chuckles around the table. Outside, a shower is dumping thick drops of water on to cratered mud roads.
Open drainage ditches run thick with grey sludge.
Barefoot children continue to play among the pregnant dogs that roam the streets.
Goat heads are being roasted in the street beside the bar. They will be used to make soup.
Everyone here is dirt poor. Some 95 per cent of the population live below the poverty line.
Most families are lucky if they have an income of 100 shillings - €1 - a day. They live seven to a room on average.
As the smell of singeing fur wafts past - briefly overpowering the stench from a pit latrine at the back of the beer garden - the solutions to Kibera's problems come thick and fast.
For Pius Munyao the answer lies in tackling HIV, tuberculosis and malaria.
"When a disease strikes it doesn't just affect one individual but the whole community," he says. "There are dirty drains here and we all live so close together."
For Nzaumi Mbithi it is security, so that she and her five children can live free from the fear of robbery and rape. It is the first time they have been asked to think about what might change their lives.
Mr Nizioki, who works as a traditional birth attendant, says: "I would like to be informed and involved. It is good that we are learning about this now but I would have liked a chance to participate."
The challenge for African aid agencies, human rights groups and community leaders has been to make sure that African voices can be heard at Gleneagles.
As Peter Ngatia, director of programmes at Amref, an African medical foundation which runs clinics in Kibera, explains: "The answers are not in London; they are not in Washington. They are here."
But when day-to-day survival is your priority, he adds, it is difficult to engage with ideas like trade, aid and debt.
"Do people in Kibera worry about the G8? They use all the energy they have to get up early, get themselves to the industrial area, get a casual job which pays them 100 shillings, enough for only one bucket of maize meal."
Instead, his organisation has hosted a series of summits, drawing academics, politicians and aid agencies together. Similar panels across Africa fed their conclusions into Tony Blair's Commission for Africa report, published earlier this year.
Last month they met again to consider the report and promised to keep up pressure on the G8 to deliver results.
In a communiqué to the Gleneagles summit, they urge the G8 leaders to remove barriers to trade, cancel debt owed by African countries and fulfil immediately their commitments to spend 0.7 per cent of national income on overseas aid.
Later we meet Grace Katumbo (57), huddled beneath a blanket in her hut. The entrance is a ladder laid flat over a drainage ditch. There is no light other than the fading sun's rays that sneak through the door.
She has a fever and her joints ache. "I need to go to the hospital for tests," she says. "Will you help me?"
It is probably malaria. Nairobi is theoretically too high, at more than 6,000 feet above sea level, and too cold for the malaria parasite to survive.
But this is Kibera. Every mud street is flanked by open drains. Today a light spattering of rain has filled puddles at every corner. The whole site is perfect for mosquitoes.
Mrs Katumbo has had to close her vegetable stall while she is ill. On a good day she takes about 100 shillings. For the past four weeks she has been unable to earn even that pitiful sum.
Development programmes, debt relief or fair trade - things that will take years to make a difference in Kibera - are of little use to her.
"We need money now," she says. "Nobody here gets the money they need to survive. Even surviving is very difficult."